Secrets & Lies

The cost is, of course, having to make up, keep straight, and communicate all the details of the Stellar Alliance (the made-up name) when I'm getting bombarded with a billion questions from every angle. How does it treat the citizens? How many worlds? Form of government? Tech? Population? Are there plans to invade? Can we make this an embassy exchange? Ugh.

I pick a story that's easy to keep straight: Specifics are classified for non-members (and you'll need your own interstellar travel before you're eligible). Member worlds are allowed to govern themselves largely as they see fit, with certain classes of exceptions. The Alliance exists to moderate conflict between member planets and unite them in the event of an external threat. My ship is intended for long missions following particularly nasty folks, one of which landed here. Because he made a stink, it became a diplomatic mission. It's me and my crew for now. No, no invasion: You don't have anything we want. We have some land set aside for you at the capital: You just need to get there under your own power to set up your own embassy.

…and it's the same endless barrage of questions over and over from every. Bloody. Ambassador. Plus the news. And the conspiracy theorists. Anf the alien nuts. And everyone else. Blech.

The upshot is that I now have a valid ID, plus ID for Alice, Adam, and Tina in their new native forms, plus Frank in all three of his forms - his new bodies don't look anything like his old, so he needs it. I mean…. Alice and Tina can look like whatever they want, no problem. But it's better if they don't have to.

Of course, Alice points out a flaw in my plan in less than a day, “You’re **** to give away magic any time you're with new people,” she takes a breath, her perfect feathered wings fluttering, “it's only a matter of time before the house of cards falls.”

Of course she brings this up while I have a resurrectee getting her fill because of exactly that problem. “I know,” I finally figured out where the moaning always come from… ugh, at least it feels good, “but it doesn't matter. I'm getting… ooh, yeah… the ambassador treatment because I could… hmm… break most countries. Those who… ooh… figure it out will publicly go along with it while privately blackmailing me for fa- aah - favors. If it gets bad I'll… ooh… do something else. I'm not stuck with the face.” Hmm… my body never disappoints. On the whole, being easy to please is wonderful. I worry I'm getting too used to it, though. My current milker rolls over, asleep.

“We could put it off further by ‘accepting citizenship applications’,” Adam considers, “Run deep background checks, accept the good folks, take ‘em on a trip around the solar system, a little mind-reading at the interview, dose them with milk, drop a Greater Geas to keep ‘em quiet about things, and scry ‘em periodically to make sure they're OK.”

Umm… I suppose I'm already engaging in light mind control… “That seems a bit…” eugh. Hmm… I'm not sure how I want to end that sentence. Horrible? Practical? Wonderful? Evil?

Alice shrugs as she gets a blanket for the newest recruit, “If we're clear on exactly what we're doing and why, get consent, and only go exactly as far as we say we will… it's not so bad.” She carefully wraps the nude woman… she was previously on the ****, in scheduling, I think? Doesn't matter, the old city is just GONE. “Solves the problem of what to do when we run out of good people we personally knew to bring back.”

“We can skip the expectation of going elsewhere by calling it a loophole for medical access,” I try to assuage my own conscience, “get people in with incurable disease, and cure them… add in Runic Magic and Contracted spell from Mana so they have a reminder of what we gave them for their silence….”

My woman nods, “I can get behind that…”

We go over some details, like the specific rules we want magically enforced, and get to work….